A Quiet Generosity Toward All --Cagle

An oft-repeated story from circa 1971 tells of a young pressman—one of the first employees of a struggling, fledgling commercial printing company named Quad/Graphics—who went to the bank to secure a mortgage for a home he wanted to purchase.

The trip proved fruitless, as the press operator was denied a mortgage by the bank.

When Harry V. Quadracci, owner and founder of the Pewaukee, WI-based printing company, heard about his employee’s plight, he called the bank himself. Quadracci asked the bank to provide his new recruit with the mortgage loan.

Quadracci backed the loan, but was far from being in the black himself.

“When Harry first started out,” says Angelo Rivello, “he didn’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out.”

But Quadracci believed in his employee. He believed in all his employees.

Early Days

Rivello, the senior vice president of manufacturing and distribution for Newsweek, has been both a friend and business associate of the Quadraccis from the company’s inception. He watched the company grow from rock bottom, when Harry took a $35,000 second mortgage out on his home to finance a press acquisition, to becoming the greatest success story this industry has ever witnessed.

“The thing that always impressed me was his quiet generosity, helping people,” Rivello says. “Harry and (wife) Betty are remarkable in my mind because of that.”

Rivello spoke fondly of the elder printer in the family, the late Harry R. Quadracci, when he was inducted into the RIT/Printing Impressions Printing Industry Hall of Fame in 1998. Now, Rivello was searching for the words to sum up his feelings regarding the loss of young Harry—the man who was known as Larry around the Quad/Graphics plant to avoid confusion with his father—the man they called The Admiral from the skits he performed in at company parties, the man who only weeks before had dealt with perhaps the company’s biggest setback in its 30-plus years.